ABSTRACT
If we look beyond the canon, women’s writing in mid-twentieth century Spain presents a yet unexplored avenue to analyze the many issues, concerns, and ideas of their time-the repressive Franco regime-that are presented from within censorial restrictions. These narratives often gain censors’ authorization because their portrayal of characters and situations does not pose a threat to the regime, its institutions, or the ideals it upholds in terms of morals and religious dogma. A vast majority of women’s novels were either authorized outright or gained approval after required revisions were incorporated. A common theme in a number of novels is women’s connement, a metonymic device that authors may have employed to illustrate the extent to which women’s liberties were infringed upon during the Spanish Civil War and in Francoist Spain, even if these women led apolitical lives. When reading these stories from the lens of the twenty-rst century, we must also consider that authors writing during the dictatorship adapted their work to negotiate the censorship terrain in order to avoid censorial rejection.
